From all high places, lived in all fair lights,

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south

And blown to inmost north; at eve and dawn

With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ;

The leader wildswan in among the stars

Would clang it and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light

The mellow breaker murmur'd Ida. Now,

Because I would have reach'd

you, had

you been

Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned

Persephone in Hades, now at length,

Those winters of abeyance all worn out,

A man I came to see you: but, indeed,
Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue,
O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait
On you, their centre: let me say but this,
That many a famous man and woman, town

And landskip, have I heard of, after seen

The dwarfs of presage; tho' when known, there grew

Another kind of beauty in detail

Made them worth knowing; but in

you

I found

My boyish dream involved and dazzled down
And master'd, while that after-beauty makes
Such head from act to act, from hour to hour,
Within me, that except you slay me here,
According to your bitter statute-book,

I cannot cease to follow you, as they say

The seal does music; who desire you more

Than growing boys their manhood; dying lips,
With many thousand matters left to do,

The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth,
Than sick men health-yours, yours, not mine-but half
Without you, with you, whole; and of those halves
You worthiest; and howe'er you block and bar
Your heart with system out from mine, I hold
That it becomes no man to nurse despair,

But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms

To follow up the worthiest till he die :

Yet that I came not all unauthorized

Behold your father's letter.'

On one knee

Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd

Unopen'd at her feet: a tide of fierce

Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,

As waits a river level with the dam

Ready to burst and flood the world with foam :
And so she would have spoken, but there rose
A hubbub in the court of half the maids

Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall

Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press

Of

snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,

And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,

And gold and golden heads; they to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,

Some crying there was an army in the land,

And some that men were in the very walls,

And some they cared not; till a clamour grew

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,

And worse-confounded: high above them stood

The placid marble Muses, looking peace.

Not peace, she look'd, the Head: but rising up

Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so

To the open window moved, remaining there
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves

Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye

Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light

Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and call'd

Across the tumult and the tumult fell.

What fear ye brawlers? am not I your Head?

On me, me, me, the storm first breaks: I dare

All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?
Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come :
If not, myself were like enough, O girls,
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,

And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,
Die yet I blame ye not so much for fear
Six thousand years of fear have made ye that
From which I would redeem ye: but for those

That stir this hubbub-you and

you-I know

Your faces there in the crowd-to-morrow morn

We hold a great convention: then shall they
That love their voices more than duty, learn
With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,
But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour,
For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.'

She, ending, waved her hands: thereat the crowd Muttering, dissolved: then with a smile, that look'd A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff

When all the glens are drown'd in azure gloom

Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said.

'You have done well and like a gentleman,

H